here's a link to some good bead info
http://gigharborflyshop.blogspot.com/2010/12/incredable-edible-bead.html

Bead pimper.

You guys selling 12 mil faceted orange? Hard to find these days. If so, i'll take a few doz.

Nice post. Liked the bit about eggs and the life cycle of fish. There is something to be said for imprinting.

I am however pissed you publicly spilled the beans to the WA crowd. There goes the almost secret...

Nice work OP, ill be getting ahold of ya soon for some bead/intruder discussions.

Bead intruder?

Sounds like some sort of fetish party. I should have figured that's how you roll Keith.

You fly guys are weird.

bead

You ought to be ashamed of yourself for posting something so blasphemous! Just kidding.

What secret Coley? Beads are all over the webz re WA steelheading, and have been for a couple years or more.

OPfisher,

As an old school swinger, I know little about nymphing, but used beads once in AK. Given that even a 12 mm bead is small relative to most steelhead lures, do nymphers use them only when fishing extremely clear water? I'm curious about how low of visibility water can be with beads still being effective.

Sg

Salmo- In steelhead green water, the last two trips we've hooked 40 fish on 12mm beads. They work in not just gin clear water quite well.
I made that birght orange color one just for higher water and it has been my go to so far this winter.
When I was guiding the Methow last fall we ran 12mm or 10mm beads... and they chomped them in the clear water so I dont think it matters too much.

40 fish in 2 trips? That ain't ordinary steelheading. You fishing on the rez?

Sg

"Ordinary" all depends on who you are and, perhaps more importantly, where you are at. Schoenweiss and I got into some fishing last Sunday that made our eyes bug out. No rez fishing for us. I'm guessing OP was fishing the same water? It also helps that OP is a master nymph guide. He's been known to churn out some stupid-good numbers more often than most.

I first learned how effective beads where a few years ago fishing in SE AK for trout and steelhead. Since then I've acquired a ton of beads in all different colors and sizes. In Idaho we use double bead nymphing rigs or a bead and a glo bug. That combo has put many steelhead on the bank and my buddy who guides for the fly shop down there uses beads almost exclusively. There extremely effective in both vodka clear water or your typical steelhead green water. When the water is murky i prefer swinging bigger patterns over nymphing, but I've seen beads work in water with a couple foot of vis on more than one occasion...
Depending on water conditions i normally run a 12mm bead on top, then a 10mm bead on bottom.
A bead box with several different colors, sizes and beads in different finishes is golden. Some toothpicks, splitshot and a few thingamabobbers and your fishing...

I was being a little sarcastic and mainly just giving our golden boy a hard time...in good humor.

Of course fishing the bead isn't a secret anywhere folks fish for trout and/or steelhead. That having been said, there is a huge difference in the number of people fishing them and their level of skill at doing so between WA/OR and other places farther north.

I have been quietly waiting and wondering when the bead revolution will sweep the west coast. Perhaps never, as there seems to be more of a wide spread loyalty to style over effectiveness in those parts.

The fact that one can hardly find a decent selection of beads in any shop down thataway speaks to the limited interest in the method...thus far.

Oh, and they work just fine, perhaps even better in dirty water. Similar principles apply to gear or fly selection based on clarity. Most would downsize and favor more natural finishes in clear water, big and bright in dirty.

Coley made me a bead believer!

AP,

I guess my point is that you don't hook 40 fish unless there are at least 40 fish around. Most of the places I'm familiar with don't have 40 fish in the entire river reach over two days, which is why I asked. Hatchery steelhead generally aren't too abundant these days except at select hatchery blood holes on the coast. I know a lot of good anglers who don't catch that many fish, mainly because there aren't that many fish around, in which case it doesn't matter who you are or how well you can fish.

I understand that nymphing can be as productive as gear fishing, because in a lot of circumstances it is gear fishing. 40 fish over 2 days is damn good fishing on any kind of sports tackle. Hell, I've seen a lot of gill nets that don't catch 40 steelhead in two days.

Rossiman,

Are you saying that a steelhead will pass up one bead and take another? I have never tried beads for steelhead, but the most selective steelhead I've ever fished are inland fall steelhead that are experiencing heavy fishing pressure. And then I'd call them mildly selective at most. I can understand AK trout, grayling, and char that feed extensively on loose salmon eggs becoming keyed in to a specific size and color, but it would be a new day for me to see steelhead, you know, that pea-brained sea run rainbow that will hit anything properly placed in front of it, to refuse one bead and strike another.

Are you referring to the late season SF Clearwater "boot" fishery? I've read that nymphing beads is popular and productive there. I presume it's because of all the hatchery steelhead that spawn there, causing a "hatch" to be matched that attracts the other steelhead. I've only fished the lower CW in ID in Sept./Oct. and never seen anyone nymph there.

Coley,

Is the difference because bead fishing in AK is essentially "matching the hatch?" In WA steelhead tend to be more opportunistic than deliberate feeders, so I think there is less incentive to engage in "hatch-matching" effort. When there are good numbers of early steelhead in the Grande Ronde and grasshoppers still around, that is about as close to matching the hatch steelhead fly fishing I've ever heard of. I suppose some bead selectivity might occur like right now on the Salmon where QIN hatchery coho and chinook are actively spawning and shedding enough loose eggs for the hatchery steelhead to take an interest and maybe even key in on them. I don't think I've ever been there when that might be going on, so I've never seen it.

I think there is a bit of a loyalty over effectiveness preference that appears to be age-distributed. Those who fly fished for steelhead in WA when the regulations didn't allow lead, either on the fly or as split shot on the leader, tend to fish swung flies exclusively or nearly so. My philosophy has long been that anyone who needs to catch a steelhead ought not to fly fish for them. It looks to me that younger fly fishermen who have come to steelheading through trout fishing, that wasn't constrained by the no-lead rule, and that included nymph fishing, are more open to nymphing for steelhead with fly gear instead of using a spinning rod which is far better suited to the technique. A lot of old school steelheaders used to put their fly rods away in the winter and take up drift rods simply because lead is better suited to the deep deliveries necessary to take winter steelhead with any consistency.

I keep hearing about some OR fly guys who are totally into nymphing for winter steelhead because apparently most of the OR N. coast rivers have an incised stream channel morphology that is best suited to nymphing and is nigh on impossible to swing. I don't know if they're into beads specifically, but they catch as many winter steelhead as their spin fishing counterparts, which I guess pencils out since they're essentially fishing the same way.

So is there a 3/4" diameter bead for dirty water? The Queets often runs with about 10" visibility, and 6 to 8" streamers seem to be in order. What bead or bead combination would be appropriate for that fishery? Or is that outside the bounds of suitable bead fishing?

How's that AK winter treating you?

Sg

All I know is that beads flat out put on a clinic in a hole after which Todd and I thoroughly worked it over with all our tried and trues!

Salmo im talking about the Clearwater in Sep, Oct and November. The latest I fish there is Thanksgiving weekend. As far as double bead nymph rigs, ya i think it makes a difference to have two beads, or a glo bug and bead. IMO, its never bad to give them two different offerings. They don't necessarily have to be different colored beads, but i like to use a 12mm bead on top and a 10mm bead on the bottom.

Steelhead can be incredibly selective with the beads they will take. I think that it is accurate to say that most steelhead runs occur well outside of typical salmon spawning cycles. As such, I don't think matching the hatch has much to do with turning steelhead on. Rainbows can also be and quite often are incredibly selective as well, but in a different way. Rainbows tend to have a strong preference for natural size and color and they are absolutely clued into the spawning cycle and, obviously, targeting this specifically. My three best steelhead beads, by far, are nothing close to natural looking. Take the Jerry Garcia glo bug? Not one of my favorites, but wicked deadly, and nothing close to natural.

Speaking to steelhead, for whatever reason certain beads seem to turn them on at certain times and under certain conditions more than others. In that sense, bead fishing can be pretty fun and challenging. Trying to find that days or that rivers "magic bead" can take a fair amount of time and homework. On rivers I am not familiar with, quite often I fish stretches of a river changing beads until I find one that works. Over time, I have narrowed quite a wide range of beads down to a handful. When I know am fishing to fish, it is rare that I won't get them to take one of the lot, and usually once you find that one, you catch pretty consistently. What the fish take can vary from day to day even on the same stretch of river under similar conditions.

There is a lot more to bead fishing than immediately meets the eye. Even within the bead fishing cliques, there is a big difference between those that know how to do it, and those that have it dialed.

Personally, I don't view it as a replacement for any other technique or something to drop all else for and take up exclusively. I think it is just another tool in the kit that has it's time and place. Sometimes that time or place is dictated by my mood as a fisherman, and sometimes it comes as a result of what the river is showing me. One thing is for sure, when the time is right, it can be the ultimate way to get fish to eat that otherwise wouldn't.

I don't necessarily agree about the fly rod not being the most effective way to present beads either. I would have a few years ago, but after spending quite a bit of time fishing them on long float and center pin rods, I can still work certain types of water far more effectively with my fly rod than I can with any other. The ability to mend a floating line and orient your terminal tackle downstream and into narrow slots for the "perfect drift" is often much easier with fly gear. I find that I fish a lot of water less effectively with traditional gear, and less water much more effectively with fly gear. With this method, it's all about the second or two the bead is in front of the fish and how good your bead and drift are, not necessarily about covering lots of water.

sorry for the novel

One more point, if you are going to get into this thing, be prepared to explain to your pals why you have a wide selection of fashionable nail polishes in your traveling fishing kit. You might want to pick up a few more tackle boxes while you are at it.